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WINDMILL COUNTRY: Cotton fields, farmers stressed by heat

West Texas cotton farmers are having withdrawal pains about coming anywhere near predicting fall harvest yields after weeks of triple digit temperatures which has put the crop in a state of stress from heat and lack of moisture.

Statewide, persistent high temperatures and dry weather stressing the cotton crop represents a trend, and nobody likes such a trend, according to the AgFax Southwest Cotton Reports. For dryland fields that don't receive a rescue rain, the prognosis is quick and deadly.

'It's hot and dry and we're starting to kick off some fruit,' reports Brad Easterling, integrated pest manager for Glasscock, Reagan and Upton counties. 'We're holding on by the skin of our teeth and waiting on rainfall. The majority of the dryland and most of the irrigated cotton is at cutout. Some dryland is blooming at cutout.'

Cutout in cotton is the final stage of the plant growth before the boll opening.

Across the Concho Valley, some early planted cotton is approaching cutout,' said Joel Webb of Ballinger, integrated pest manager for Runnels, Tom Green and Concho counties.

'Most cotton is in early bloom and white flowers are everywhere,' he said. 'Unfortunately, we keep missing a chance for rain.'

Despite the hot, dry weather, a lot of dryland fields on the South Plains around Lubbock still look pretty good, said Seth Byrd, cotton specialist for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

'Everything is blooming and many fields are at peak bloom, which is the highest water demand level,' Byrd said. 'Some rough looking fields have done what they are going to do production-wise, but the vast majority of dryland could benefit from rain and put on additional fruit.

'In irrigated fields, the subsurface drip fields look good,' he said. 'With the hot and dry July and parts of June, fields lost a lot but the drip helped fill that void of soil moisture.'

Cotton needs heat units to grow, but we don't need them all in one or two days a farmer told me the other day.

Actually, heat units are measured by the number of days with temperature above the threshold of 60 degrees during the development stages of the cotton plant. From planting to harvest, cotton should reach from 2,200 to 2,600 heat units in 130 to 160 days.

Meanwhile, farmers can expect prices to hover between 65 cents and 78 cents over the next few months, according to John Robinson, cotton economist at Texas A&M University in College Station.

'The Texas cotton crop has been hit hard with excessive hot, dry weather over the past 30 days,' he said. 'Harvest projections for Texas are seven million bales on the upside. The low side would be the five-year average for Texas, excluding the 2011 drought, of about 5.5 million bales.

'The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast 6.6 million bales in 2016, which is splitting the difference,' Robinson said.

Just the mention of 2011 — the worst drought year in Texas history — brings about sudden chills to cotton farmers (and ranchers, too).

Cotton production across the 12-county Southern Rolling Plains totaled 26,526 bales in 2011. Excluding that worst production year, the five-year average since record keeping started in 1990 was 160,478 bales. Cotton production in 2007 was a record breaker at 301,848 bales.